CONSERVATIONIST SETS HIS SIGHTS ON TRAIL SYSTEM

Long-time Fallbrook resident Wallace Tucker stepped down as chairman of the Fallbrook Land Conservancy, only to step out as the spokesman for a new plan to establish a 30-mile walking trail encircling the town. TOM PFINGSTEN CREDIT: Tom Pfingsten

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Long-time Fallbrook resident Wallace Tucker stepped down as chairman of the Fallbrook Land Conservancy, only to step out as the spokesman for a new plan to establish a 30-mile walking trail encircling the town. TOM PFINGSTEN CREDIT: Tom Pfingsten

In the 25 years that Wallace Tucker presided over the Fallbrook Land Conservancy, hills that were once bare sprouted homes and orchards, as thousands of acres of open space were gathered into gated developments.

But thanks to Tucker and his volunteers, thousands more acres — 2,025, to be precise — have been set aside. Ridgelines with endless views were opened to hikers, and one-time citrus orchards were restored to their historical chaparral on his watch.

Since stepping down as chairman in December, Tucker has taken to a new kind of legwork: an ambitious plan to map out a 30-mile trail encircling Fallbrook, using existing easements and roads.

He’s calling it the “Walkabout Web concept,” the starting point of a long-term plan to cobble together a network of interconnected trails in Fallbrook.

“The concept is, you’ll leave your house and within five or 10 minutes, you’ll pick up a trail that will lead you to other portions of town, to our preserves or to the loop trail, where you can take a very long walk,” Tucker told me when we met on Thursday.

Unlike the tasks of a conservancy chairman, which frequently involved desk work — all escrow and bequests — Tucker has done much of his trail-map planning on foot, with a longtime partner, conservancy co-founder Vince Ross.

“We’re walking the roads of Fallbrook right now,” Tucker said. “Vince is my partner in crime — he and I are laying the foundation. We’re also walking the internal parts of Fallbrook, which, frankly, is more challenging than I thought it would be. A lot of the roads here are not public; they’re private.”

The plan relies on the favor of at least three major landowning organizations: the Metropolitan Water District, whose north-south right of way would provide a key eastern segment of the trail, as well as the Fallbrook Public Utility District and San Diego State University, which has owned 4,422 acres in the Santa Margarita River watershed since 1962.

The latest challenges seem insignificant, though, compared with the efforts that have gone into achieving the dozens of transactions needed to conserve those 2,025 acres.

Tucker is a tall, mild-mannered guy, an astrophysicist by trade.

He and Ross formed an unusual alliance in the late 1980s, after finding themselves on opposite sides of a controversial plan by San Diego County officials to establish a trails network in town.

The proposed lines cut through too many backyards, and the map was scrapped — one of many to suffer that fate through the years in Fallbrook.

At the time, Tucker was spending half of his time living in a suburb near Harvard University in Boston, where his astronomy work was — and still is — based.

“They had a very good land trust there,” Tucker said. “I told Vince, ‘Come back and visit me, and I’ll show you what they’ve done here.’”

Tucker’s late wife, Karen, was the third founding member of the conservancy, which now owns and manages local preserves like Los Jilgueros off South Mission Road, as well as the distant, sprawling slopes of Margarita Peak, at 3,193 feet the highest point in the county west of Interstate 15.

The idea for a network of trails has been carefully discussed and planned for decades by various leaders, including members of the Fallbrook Planning Group, but Tucker and Ross are on to something, I think.

“We want to find the trail,” Tucker told me. “We’re not trying to create a lot of trails; we’re trying to use trails that exist.”

The conservancy hopes to publish an instructional trail map later this year, providing local residents with a tutorial on how to hike from the San Luis Rey River to the Santa Margarita River, for example.

For Tucker, whose conservancy has preserved swaths of rural Fallbrook, and Ross, a downtown visionary who supports community development, the trail concept has meant a return to the issue that originally brought them together — albeit on opposite sides.

“This is what I’ve been wanting to do for years,” Tucker said. “We’re returning to that now, Vince and I. Since then, there’s been some precedence set. A lot of the pieces are in place now that weren’t in place, so the time is right, I think.”

And if you ask why he chose this, of all the possible retirement projects, he’ll just shrug.